


hit the ground running

by orphan_account



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Bad Humor, M/M, Multi, Really Bad Humor, Twilight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 17:17:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kagami is a vampire, Aomine's a werewolf, and Kuroko's not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hit the ground running

The whole sparkling thing is actually pretty inconvenient, even if no one ever asks Taiga why he walks around wearing an LA Dodgers hat or the world’s largest hoodie collection throughout the year. It probably has something to do with the fact that the last guy who asked went missing within the following 48 hours because Taiga sucked every last drop of his blood. The point is that Taiga sparkles in the sun and in Southern California there was sunshine at least three hundred sixty-five days a year. The habit translated over even with his move to Japan, and he walks around with the same weather-beaten LA Dodgers hat in tow.

Apparently people in Japan have no sense of self-preservation, because it’s three weeks after meeting Kuroko that he turns to Taiga and says: “I saw you at the basketball court yesterday.” Taiga is tugging up on the collar of his uniform when he continues.

“I didn’t know that Kagami-kun sparkled.”

Taiga wants to slap his forehead in exasperation as he vaguely ponders whether or not he should kill Kuroko in the alleyway to their right. Then he thinks about Interhigh and the fact that they’re supposed to play Shuutoku next week, and he thinks about going to Maji Burger with Kuroko and going to practice with Kuroko and going to class with Kuroko and he finds that he can’t exactly muster up the willpower to drag him into a deserted garage. He sighs instead and runs a hand through his hair. Alex told him about the three different ways he should approach anyone who so much as has an inkling of his true identity: kill them, eat them, or negotiate. She might do the first when she finds out that Taiga was dressed in anything but a habit or a zoot suit in the public eye.

“What do you want?” he asks.

Kuroko isn’t stupid, which is why it’s doubly annoying that he looks up at Taiga with a confused sort of expression. “What do you mean?”

“If you’re going to report me, tell people at school, or call the Secret Service, then I’m willing to negotiate something,” he says. That could have been executed with a little more tact, but Taiga isn’t picky.

Kuroko’s head tilts and it occurs to Taiga that this was nothing along the lines of what he was thinking. It actually makes him feel like a jerk, and well _that’s new_. Taiga doesn’t think that he’s felt like a jerk in the last century, especially since it’s not like he has much to feel like an asshole about when he’s a vampire.

“Why would I report you?” Kuroko asks, and a shot of panic goes through Taiga. Maybe he just jumped the gun and Kuroko doesn’t have a clue after all.

“Stop playing dumb.” He frowns at Kuroko and tries to loom over him menacingly. It’s one of the few perks of vampirism and it totally got Hideaki from Class 3-F to give him the last curry pan in the cafeteria last Tuesday. Of course, Kuroko doesn’t budge, looking up at him with that same impassive expression.

“You know what I am.” Taiga waits for it, starts _hovering_ when Kuroko says nothing. “Say it.”

Kuroko opens his mouth to speak. “A particularly wrinkly high schooler.”

Taiga thinks his ears have stopped working. “Uh...” is all he gets out before Kuroko smiles at him.

“I thought vampires were supposed to be eternally youthful,” Kuroko says.

A vein would be throbbing in his forehead right about now--if Taiga had a pulse, that is. He thinks it’s probably for the better, especially when Kuroko pulls him down for a kiss. The novelty of having one’s heartbeat pounding in their ears is lost on him, but he thinks Kuroko’s pulse, strong and steady against his skin, more than makes up for it.

***

Things do not get much more fucked up than this. All things considered, Taiga has managed to live a pretty normal life, flying by under the radar. Then he’s accosted by a werewolf at the basketball court and his name happens to be Aomine Daiki.

_Well_ , Taiga thinks, _you’re born and then you’re playing basketball with Japanese werewolves_.

Twenty minutes into their one-on-one scrimmage, Taiga makes an amendment: _You’re born and then a Japanese werewolf is kicking your ass at basketball_. It isn’t even worth it because the Coach smacks him over the head with her clipboard and Kuroko gives him that _Look_ , the one that he got when he punched him in the middle of a game for being a pigheaded dick. You would think living for over a century would steel someone against a high school boy, but Taiga will admit that it’s pretty unnerving to have Kuroko glare at him.

What makes the entire thing worse is that Aomine--the bastard--had the gall to laugh and point at him.

“Your light is too dim,” he said, smug as shit. 

Aomine probably thinks he’s the height of comedy, which just makes Taiga want to punch his face in. He doesn’t resist the urge when he sees him on the basketball courts again after Interhigh. Aomine catches his punch easily and not for the first time in his life, Taiga wonders what compelled anyone to turn him into a sparkling living undead as opposed to letting him die in the war. The second thought he has is that Alex is _definitely_ going to kill him when she sees him next; Taiga wonders if there’s even a safe place on this earth that he can hide from Alex, or at least, he was wondering before that bastard Aomine decided to throw him across the court.

His head cracks against the bleachers and he’s honestly a lot more worried for the state of this bench than he is for his skull. Counting to ten under his breath, Taiga tries to remember everything that Alex has told him about anger management--tries to remember that just because he doesn’t turn green like Bruce Banner, it doesn’t mean that he can start a fist fight with a fucking _werewolf_ at the park.

_7, 6, 5_.

“Aren’t you supposed to be trying to keep things on the downlow?” he asks, raising a brow at Taiga--like throwing him across the basketball court was even a little bit like “keeping things on the downlow.”

_4, 3, 2_.

Rolling his eyes, Taiga figures that if he dies later, at least it will have been after he pounded in Aomine Daiki’s face beforehand. He stands up and cracks his neck, wincing a little at the sound.

“I thought werewolves had survival instincts,” Taiga mutters. Then he lunges for Aomine, aiming straight for his head. What happens next is nothing like what he planned, however.

Instead of hearing that satisfying crunch of Aomine’s nose under his fist, Kuroko suddenly appears between them, and Taiga comes to a skittering halt.

“What the _hell_!” he yelps, stepping back in a parody of a Saturday morning Acme toon. The way Kuroko always manages to sneak up on him is a little more than unnerving, but he didn’t think that he had taken to stalking him on a Friday afternoon. Dragging a hand down his face he narrows his eyes at Kuroko. “When did you even get here?” That’s really not the question he should be asking here. “Why the hell are you here?” He thinks the rudeness is a little warranted.

Kuroko doesn’t answer any of his questions. In fact, it sort of looks like Kuroko is--no, he’s definitely pissed. It hits some deep-rooted part of conscience inside of him, and it makes him run a hand through his hair.

“I wasn’t going to _kill_ him,” he says, feeling more and more like a schoolboy caught for doing something expressly forbidden. “Besides, you know, Aomine’s um...”

Taiga could probably count the number of times the expression on Kuroko’s face has changed, and now is not one of those times.

“Aomine--he’s um...you know how I’m not a--err...” He’s pretty sure that as a living, breathing--sort of--vampire, that he shouldn’t feel so ridiculous stating the facts. It’s just that unimpressed look on Kuroko’s face, the one that says “stop being stupid, Kagami-kun.” Taiga is relatively certain that all of this is just one big laugh for Kuroko at his expense.

“Aomine’s, um...not hu...man,” he finally says.

Kuroko nods. “I know.” Still sounds unimpressed.

Taiga shakes his head, turning to look back at Aomine so quickly that he swears he has whiplash.

“Aomine-kun knows that I know,” Kuroko tells him. 

If sighing was something that Kuroko did, then Taiga imagines that’s exactly what he would be doing now: sighing about a hapless vampire being unable to process the current state of affairs. In all honesty, it’s not his fault that this entire situation has escaped his control, and it’s definitely not his fault that he’s horrified.

“We should get burgers.”

_Definitely_ not his fault that he’s horrified.

***

Sitting in Maji Burger with Aomine Daiki and Kuroko Tetsuya is the last way Taiga wanted to spend his Friday night, especially when Kuroko looks up from his burger and says: “You still haven’t apologized, Kagami-kun.”

_Neither has Aomine_ , he wants to say, but this is really getting stupid, and if apologizing means that Kuroko will stop giving him that Look, then he might just do it.

He opens his mouth slowly. “Sorry about earlier.”

Aomine grunts suddenly before apologizing as well, muttering out a low “Sorry, too” and Taiga wonders if it’s because Kuroko kicked him under the table. The furrow in Aomine’s brows suggests that that’s exactly what happened. He pushes his burger, bought mostly for show, into Aomine’s direction. It’s a little bit juvenile, but he figures it’s as good of a substitute for an olive branch as any. What the heck is anyone going to do with an olive branch anyway?

“Peace?”

There’s a grin on Aomine’s face. “As if. Don’t think I’ll let you win at basketball because you’re a bloodsucker.”

Taiga snorts. “I meant the part where we bash each other’s heads in, idiot.”

Five minutes of trading jibes turns into fifteen and they agree to meet tomorrow at the gym for a one-on-one. It isn’t really fair to have Kuroko play against either of them alone, but he doesn’t seem to mind, even if he collapses with exhaustion ten minutes into the scrimmage. For the short hours he’s on that court, he forgets that he isn’t like Kuroko, that he isn’t really an average high school student.

Maybe that’s why he agrees to do it again next week, and the week after that. It isn’t long before they show up on noon on Saturdays without having to schedule it. He knows it’s a serious problem when he finds himself thinking that Kuroko was right, they really should have gotten burgers that night. He finds himself thinking that he’s glad that they did.

When Aomine and Kuroko come back for water, he smiles back at them, happy to learn that not everything has to be so hard.

\----

\---

-

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by friends, to whom I must apologize for birthing this thing. I hope that it was at least entertaining.


End file.
